


The Answer.

by Bakuras



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Dangan Ronpa Zero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 13:38:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5668006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bakuras/pseuds/Bakuras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The transition from knight to vigilante takes only as long as the span of time between sending your brother off to the council and realizing he never came back.  They never came back.  Any noble blood pumping in your veins had bled out by the time your knees hit the concrete, and the knight in you was dead before the pain of that had the chance to set in.  But that pain is long, long gone, replaced by something dark and blank that you never knew until now.</p>
<p>[One of you watches the tape.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Answer.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a short drabble I wrote on my rp blog a long time ago, I figured I might as well post it here since I kind of like it!!

You aren’t comfortable in street clothes. You never have been.  


But the hood conceals your eyes, casting a shadow over the rest of your face like a cowl.  If it weren’t for your height, you’d be completely anonymous.  Few of these people actually know who you are anyway, though.  For now.  

It all leads you here.    


Every question, every broken bone, every person who seemed to have _dropped off the face of the planet_ has played its’ part in leading you to the poorly-lit underground where the air is thick and almost wet.  Breathing is difficult, and you don’t know if it’s from the air itself (it’s too cold to be this humid, but it feels like you’re breathing water regardless) or from the fact that the concrete walls seem as though they’re pushing in toward you, crushing your chest.  Letting you take a deeper breath and break your ribs against the side of them in the expansion.    


The transition from **knight** to **vigilante** takes only as long as the span of time between sending your brother off to the council and realizing he never came back.  **They** never came back.  Any noble blood pumping in your veins had bled out by the time your knees hit the concrete, and the knight in you was dead before the pain of that had the chance to set in.  But that pain is long, long gone, replaced by something dark and blank that you never knew until now.    


_ Have you felt **anything** since then?    
_

_What have you known that wasn’t agony and rage?_   


There’s a noise down the left corridor, and it echoes in the way only recorded sound does.    


_ Ha.    
_

You’ve forgotten what **dread** feels like, haven’t you _?_   The acidic taste of bile rising behind your tongue as you feel your intestines coil around each other like breeding snakes.  In all of your anger, you’ve almost lost the instinct to fear.  Almost.    


Almost.    


“Ah, it’s…beginning again…“    


That voice isn’t recorded, but it’s muffled by a mask.  A mask that you had been given to disguise yourself.  You don’t.   


If they notice you, they don’t show it.   


> _Young people, test the true extent of your ‘hope’ to win!_  
>  You’ve all proved yourselves to be more talented than anyone else!    
> For ‘your own hope’ you must kill more than anyone else has!    
> The final exam of mutual killing has now begun!    
> 

You thought the worst sickness was dread.    


The second you realize that you recognize every _single_ person on the screen, in the room - the room you can’t get to, the room you **_know_** in whatever is left of your heart is covered in corpses and blood - you try to look away.  You know that once it starts, you can’t.    


But these are the answers you came for.  The answers your brothers need to know.  If you leave, and run, and scream and never look back into this god-awful place, you are a traitor to your family and a traitor to your school.  You’re going to watch.  You’re going to hold your tongue.  You’re going to slip out quietly at the end, tell the others what they need to know, and then you’re going to lock yourself in your closet and bawl until you’re numb again.    


The people look tiny and vulnerable.  You’ve never seen your brother _shake_ like that.    


You can predict every movement he makes because you would have made them too.  You know his priority.  That he’s going to make himself a wall between the girl with a cleaver and the boy he has his back to.  You see the way his teeth bare in warning.   


Because you know Isshiki, your stomach drops.    


You know it’s a bluff.  He’s not going to hurt her.  If it were you, and it almost _is_ , you’d make yourself into more of a threat than you _want_ to be if it means keeping her attention off of him.  If he could, he’d protect all of them, but you know who he’d choose over all of the rest.  Over any of **_you_**.  


You know Soushun Murasame too.  Not in the same way that you know Isshiki, but you know him well enough to know that he’s not going to be the one to slit your brother’s throat.    


You also know that in the moment before the cleaver hits your brother’s head, he’s going to scream at him to run.  He won’t.  Not for a precious few seconds that could cost him his life.    


It’s remarkably rare for any of you to think badly about anything Murasame does, but his unwillingness to let his bodyguard take the fall for him is incredibly stupid.  It doesn’t strike you as odd that you’re more concerned about _him_ running than you are that you’re about to watch Isshiki’s brains splatter onto that back wall.     


When they do, the floodgates of hell burst at the hinges.  There had to be one.  There had to be a first before the _real_ slaughter begins, like a ceremonial breaking of the ground before the construction of a building.  The first push into the earth with a golden shovel.    


Your brother’s death broke that ground first.  But like all things that must start somewhere, what comes _after_ is almost incomparable.    


And you were right. 

You cannot rip your eyes away.


End file.
